Notices by Pauline von Hellermann (pvonhellermannn@mastodon.green)

@aral what a great piece. I really like your linking of the climate, democracy and personhood emergency. I am just sad I didn’t see this earlier, it would have been perfect for a #Personhood module I wrote and taught 2022-24. I agree, personhood is really important! Now sadly i have been made redundant i can’t teach anymore; nevertheless, good to read even now 😊

@aral thank you for this, Aral, i just listened to the whole thing. Really great to get this short, powerful intro to your work. Hope tht, thanks to you, we can all eventually wean ourselves off big tech.

One of the children just said:

“school is just all about turning us into #NPCs”

(for the uninitiated: non-player background characters in online games, scripted to do the same thing over and over again).

It’s so true!

Honestly, their school is obsessed with disciplining; obedience overrides everything else. None of this equips them for dealing with the challenges they, the world will face in 10 years time. So depressing. #Education

@aral Hope you will be ok!

Yep, I want that, too
https://aus.social/@firstdogonthemoon/113672421436981163

@aral 😄

So nice to be brought back to sanity after being called a “jew hater” in the previous reply for sharing an article that talks about “israel’s war on gaza”. Honestly. You would think at some point these lovely Germans would give up, but they don’t!

#ClimateDiary An Eastbourne friend just told us about how he went to hear Simon Reeve at the Congress theatre on Friday. He showed us this image he had taken from Reeve’s talk: “this amount of ice melts every HOUR. You could hear a pin drop in the audience. When you see it like that it really brings it home.”

Well done Simon Reeve for talking about climate change in the Eastbourne Congress theatre (not a climate activist crowd, more the opposite) - and for using an image that works.

#ClimateDiary We are reaching #DontLookUp levels of warning by scientists about the catastrophic effects of the (very probable!) stopping of #AMOC. Nordic countries plunged into cold, rest of planet boiling. Please do read this.

But guess what: #DontLookUp!

https://en.vedur.is/media/ads_in_header/AMOC-letter_Final.pdf

#FollowTheMoney 🧵 43/n Now of course Elon Musk - having made 2/3 of Twitter staff redundant - has been hired by Trump to head the new “Efficiency Department”. i find this prospect alone deeply, deeply scary - both in terms of public services disappearing and I feel for the 1000s who will lose their jobs. As you all know: there is absolutely nothing “efficient” about these kinds of cuts whatsoever. They are deeply destructive, nothing else.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/nov/12/trump-appoints-elon-musk-government-efficiency-department

#FollowTheMoney 🧵42/n Firstly, I am conscious of my own #redundancy being very much part of the wider hollowing out, draining out of both public services and professional, creative industries everywhere (see many posts ⬆️). I am really scared about this - it’s strange how this is happening but not really talked about; no #unemployment crisis narrative at all, as of course most people, like me, end up not being “unemployed” but doing smaller, precarious jobs; very few of us on benefiso no stats

#FollowTheMoney 🧵 31/n I think the graph came from this New York Times piece but don’t have a subscription so can’t check.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/05/03/opinion/global-billionaires-tax.html

#FollowTheMoney 🧵 32/n Watched “The Founder” on Netflix yesterday, about McDonalds. Really interesting- would recommend it. Particularly how the real breakthrough came when Kroc, advised by Sonneborn, went for real estate. Checked it on Wikipedia:

“McDonald's present-day real-estate holdings represent $37.7 billion on its balance sheet, about 99% of the company's assets and 35% of its annual gross revenue.”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_McDonald%27s

#FollowTheMoney 🧵 33/n

Today an overlap with #ClimateDiary: British farmers are struggling due to climate change, Brexit AND supermarket power:

Most farmers receive less than 1% of the profit made from the food they grow. Of the 20% food inflation experienced by the public a minuscule proportion made its way back to the farmer. Tesco made a £2.3bn profit last year, while 49% of fruit and veg farmers fear they’ll be out of business before the end of this one.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/article/2024/may/08/british-farmer-food-climate-crisis-business?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

#FollowTheMoney 🧵34/n #ClimateDiary

We had a veg box for 12 years from Hankham Organics; 3 weeks ago we suddenly had a note with our box that they were closing, as it wasn’t working financially any more. 😢😢😢

And a fish merchant who we got smoked salmon for Christmas from closed this year too, for the same reasons. Plus Goldsmiths’ woes of course (#AcademicVenting). So many good, small organisations struggling and ending.

#FollowTheMoney 35/n #ClimateDiary #AcademicVenting

This is why:

https://mstdn.ca/@dbattistella/112408392604056154

#FollowTheMoney 🧵 36/n Here a positive, progressive use of money flows:

1400+ Columbia University alumni from its 20 schools have pledged to withhold all “financial, programmatic, and academic support” until school meets demands related to divestment, student discipline, and community safety.
Group website says over $63 million of donations at risk. #Gaza #studentprotests

#FollowTheMoney 🧵37/n

Even though all of us living in the UK know that homelessness is terrible (and has grown exponentially since 2010), it is still shocking to see this graph.

(There are notes on methods: all countries included both rough sleeping and invisible homelessness).

https://www.oecd.org/social/homelessness-country-notes.htm?utm_term=pac&utm_medium=social&utm_content=1-CorporatePriorityContent,2-Recovery%5BSupportingPublicandSocialPolicies%5D,3-ELS&utm_source=twitter

#FollowTheMoney 🧵 38/n

A rare silver lining to severe cuts in local council budgets: for the last few years Eastbourne have stopped spraying our streets and I love this time of year, flowers reclaiming the streets everywhere. #Rewilding #ClimateDiary

#FollowTheMoney 🧵 39/n

Have to add this here. The last 14 years summarised in 4 images #UKPolitics #GE2024

EDIT: here link itself too as images in screenshot i complete

https://x.com/ACORNunion/status/1793934201860792465

#FollowTheMoney 🧵 40/n haven’t added anything here in a while - but this needs to be posted!

Trump’s victory adds record $64bn to wealth of richest top 10

Share surge increases Elon Musk’s fortune by $26bn in a day as Jeff Bezos, Sergey Brin and Bill Gates also benefit

#USelections2024

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2024/nov/07/trump-victory-adds-record-wealth-richest-top-10?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other